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Beethoven rocked, but the bass player ruled the night.

The conductor must have known, because he thanked each section of the orchestra, making them stand in turn to take a bow, but the double-bass section he barely acknowledged. 

Even the cymbals stood when it was the turn of the timpani to take their bow, despite the oaf first coming in too soon and then over-correcting and coming in late on the next. He had sat there all through the first three movements, seated patiently at shadow’s edge, waiting for his grand clanging entrance in the fourth. And when his moment arrived he messed it up. 

The first bass frowned, her square jaw set, she tucked her chin in and glared across the stage at him. If he even noticed he never acknowledged it: she expected he might at least have nodded discreetly, lowered his eyes apologetically in the direction of the conductor if not her, showed some contrition . . . But nothing of the sort. Instead, like an overeager teenager, he blundered on: his hands aloft, ready for his next metalled assault on time and beauty.

The schmuck. All he had to do was take his cue from the timpani and he couldn’t go wrong. The beautiful timpani. If the bass player had noticed her—seen how she moved with and was moved by the music, watched how her hands her body the sticks her drums all became one, sensed her perfect time—then surely he must have some inkling of it too: he stood right there, a heartbeat behind her!

The timpani never missed a beat. Always in the corner of the bass player’s eye, from across the stage, her slim shoulders rose and fell with the rhythm. Even when she wasn’t playing, her whole body seemed to rise and fall marking time. From where she sat the bass player could see—in the keys of the timpanist’s ribs above her décolletage, in the fixing of her clavicles, the set of her mouth, and the way she held and then released her head—how the timpanist would hold her breath in anticipation of the moment when she was to strike. And then exhale on her note, followed by the sharp intake of breath as she readied for the next. 

The first bass’ admiration and affection for the timpanist was not reciprocated; if anything there might even have been some hostility. It was, thought the bass, all the result of a misunderstanding: a harmless attempt at a joke that had gone wrong, a brief moment when their eyes met across the stage. 

The timpanist seldom looked up: she would follow the score in front of her, keeping her attention on the conductor all the while. In this she was so unlike the bass player, whose eyes roved across the stage, lingered occasionally on the conductor, and out into the audience as far as she could see into the darkened faces of the auditorium. 

Tonight especially, the first bass avoided looking directly in front in the direction of the cellos. The principal cello was wearing one of those stringy tops she favoured when her flushes were out of control. The bass had once offered, apropos of nothing, that the black silken blouses she favoured were wonderfully cool and so very elegant, but the cello had said nothing in reply. She had not spoken with the bass since. Still she wore the shoelace tops.

The result was that on nights like these the first bass did everything she could to look somewhere else. Anything to avoid catching sight of the cello’s batwing triceps swinging in counterpoint to the sound of her strings. 

No doubt that was why, whenever the conductor looked in her direction, the first bass did not appear to be focussed on him: she kept her face turned away, an oblique eye on the conductor, doing her best to look past the violent distraction that lay between them. 

Not that her lack of attention had affected her play: tonight, as on every night, the bass section had been sublime: stridently plucking out the notes when they should, blending discreetly in when required, still managing to reach down into the very base of the audiences collective spine and rattle it to its foundations. The first bass did not need to watch the conductor’s every move for she also had perfect time. 

The conductor didn’t care much for this. A jumped-up little man, he anxiously hid his bald spot in platform heels and a careful coiffure. If the truth were told he was—like so many other men—intimated by the physical presence, the confidence, the independence of the first bass. The conductor had no time for independence or perfection: he craved only adoration. 

The bass was not the adoring type. She played her part, she led her section with steely determination, an occasional glance or a click of her tongue or the way she pushed her face forward pointedly at the score was enough to let the others know when they were straying. The bass section was one of the strongest in the orchestra and she for one was not going to pretend otherwise. Whether the conductor acknowledged her performance or not, she knew that the audience clapped for them too. 

The second violinist, on the other hand, was the adoring type. At every opportunity he stared up awestruck at the conductor, who gifted him an occasional acknowledging glance. The second violin would simper in appreciation and then, remembering that he should keep up his pretended infatuation with the first violin (whose place he secretly coveted), he would turn that same simpering face towards him. But the first violin was having none of it: in a determined huff, he shut his eyes whenever the score permitted, his pretended reverie a deliberate ploy to avoid the second’s eye. An atmosphere had settled into that little corner of strings. The first bass feared that soon it might seep out in the direction of the horns and oboes beyond until the whole orchestra had been consumed by it.

This little contretemps à trois was so blindingly, irritatingly obvious to her, from where she sat across the stage, that soon she could bear it no longer. If only they would concentrate on the music! And heaven knows, she thought, a few of them could do with it. With a sharp flick of her tempestuous ponytail, the first bass turned her head to look at the audience, searching the faces for some recognition from someone else of what she had just witnessed. 

She challenged the watching faces, daring them to answer her inquiring look, but she saw no takers. All the while she counted the bars, measuring the time until she must lead her rumbling giants back into the mêlée. Just before that moment came, she turned her focus back quickly to her own instrument and marshalled her squad to theirs. First the sustained pizzicato, then she counted out the pause, plucked again, waited, and then back into the long passage that followed. 

At the rest she shook free the tension in her left hand. The bracelet of polished obsidian that she wore there slipped down and stopped at her wrist; the weight of it made her smile with the memory of her lover who gave it to her. 

She turned now and looked back over her shoulder, a little behind her and to the left, up into the raked wings of the auditorium where he sat. It was there where—that first night, three seasons ago—he had stood to solitary attention, when the bass section took their bow. When she looked up in his direction, he had pointed his finger at her, tipped an imaginary hat, and clapped loudly. That same night, after she left the stage and the auditorium intended on heading home, he was there waiting for her, outside, on the road. 

That first night they went together to a late-night restaurant: she ate something, he drank first one brandy and then a second and perhaps a third, they hardly spoke, and time slipped away. The next night she took him home, where he lay between her legs, and they said even less, although she let her body sing. By the morning he was gone, but the next week he was there again: sitting in his customary seat, waiting for her outside when the concert was over, once more in her bed, attuned to her every need. 

Outside of the concert evenings they never saw each other. In the timeless weeks between seasons she did not hear from him. She went about her usual ways; did her usual thing; saw the usual people; made love to another; and wondered very little about her lover, even on those nights when she wore the stone bracelet. 

And then, on the first night of the new season, he was back and she felt a longing for him that she had not realised was there. That night, as they lay together in her bed, she did not ask him where he had been. If he knew anything at all of her life apart from the music he never said. She never asked him about his life in turn. 

These thoughts of him stirred her, as they did whenever she played, whenever she practised, or rehearsed. They distracted her, took her away from the moment, even as they brought her closer to the beauty of the music. Where she sat at the forefront of the stage she imagined, for a moment, that she detected the smell of him, alone amongst the audience; she tasted the sharpness of him; she felt the touch of his lips along the inside of her thigh; the pull of her hairs where their bodies met . . . 

She pushed him away from her! She willed herself instead to focus on the conductor. She watched closely for the cue from the baton that would bring her back into time. She tightened her knee against her wooden bass, anticipating the throb of it through her body. But still she knew how later tonight it would be her lover who would lie instead between her legs. 

And then, she was swept up again completely in the music, in the feeling of being on stage, in the mood and the timing of it: the sudden fast section that came at the start of the final movement of the Fourth; it always took her breath away. In that moment there could be nothing else for her. Then, when the sudden quick passage ended and there was the briefest of pauses in anticipation of what was still to come, she shook out again her left hand and turned to look up and behind her (in a way the writer of the story would have described as a knowing smile). 

It was only a quick glance, for the finale came fast and furious upon the orchestra and the first bass was soon hard at work again, laying the foundation for the timpani and, in turn, the percussion to follow including the cymbals. The conductor was building up the tension: stabbing here at the horns, there at the violins, then the cellos, now the brass, catching up the excitement of the audience on the end of his baton, readying them, readying them for the moment to come. That moment at the end, when the world and the music crashed together.

And it was then, when the stage had been perfectly set for him, that the cymbals missed his cue. First bass glared at him. The schmuck!

To her credit, the timpani never missed a beat. She shrugged off the cymbals’ faux pas, lifted her hands from where they had just stilled her drums and, picking up again her sticks, came in perfectly on her turn. In perfect time, without any need of the angry stab from the conductor’s wand, which was directed instead at the errant cymbals behind her. 

On his third attempt the cymbals got it right: he hit his note just as the timpanist did.

The bass player breathed a sigh of relief: free of the tension of the clanging mistake, she leaned forward over her instrument, played with gusto this her favourite passage of the piece, allowed herself to be completely swept up again in the tide of music all around her. Then, when the final ringing finale had reached its crescendo, she looked up and at precisely that moment so too did the timpanist and for that one brief moment their eyes locked and the bass player, with a sense of relief, affectionately thrust out the tip of her tongue. Shocked, the timpanist looked down at her instruments and the bass knew she had misread the situation, that she had made a mistake. But by then it was too late: time had come and gone and would not go back.

A blush of shame dampened her forehead and she wiped it with the back of her hand and then that hand she wiped on the back of her thigh, freeing once again the heavy black bracelet. If anyone in the audience had noticed it was impossible to tell, for they stood as one—her lover amongst them—and applauded and applauded and applauded as the conductor first took his own bows and then, after his traditional exit and entrance, directed the applause to the orchestra and each of its sections. All of them, that is, except the heavy strings.

She turned and smiled at her lover where he stood. Then she narrowed her eyes against the bright stage-lights, peering intently into the dim auditorium. She was looking for someone, challenging them to show themselves and be counted. But, who? 

Even her lover couldn’t help but lean forward, from where he stood, to follow her gaze, wondering if perhaps there might be some other. 

She scanned the faces: the smiling faces, the laughing faces, their expressions of joy and relief. And then she saw him. She recognised him. It must be him. He was back again, smiling at her whenever she looked in his direction. It had to be him who had written that appalling story—the one that started with Beethoven rocked, but the bass player ruled the night? 

The schmuck. It hadn’t even been Beethoven on the bill that night, but Tchaikovsky.